Domestic Affairs

The Labour Party government, which had been elected in May 1997, continued in 1998 its program of reforming the United Kingdom’s constitution. On May 7 Londoners voted to accept government plans for a new assembly and a directly elected mayor for the nation’s capital. On a low turnout (34%), 72% voted in favour of the plans. This decision meant that London would have an elected citywide administration for the first time since the abolition of the Greater London Council in 1986.

The decision was important for a wider reason. It created the first executive post in the history of British national and local government to be filled by direct election. By tradition, voters had chosen local representatives to serve on local councils and in Parliament; executive posts, such as the prime minister or council leader, had always been filled by the leadership of parties that had gained the most seats in each election. Local political leaders, however, were rarely well known, and the turnout in local elections seldom rose above 40% (compared with 70-80% in national elections). The government hoped that having an election for mayor of London would attract high-profile candidates and achieve higher voter turnouts. Prime Minister Tony Blair made it clear that if this happened in London, the practice of electing mayors directly would be extended to other towns and cities.

In November the government announced it would start legislating immediately to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords. At the beginning of the 1998-99 parliamentary session, the Lords contained 1,298 members, of whom 750 had inherited their title (usually from their father). Of the 339 hereditary peers who belonged to one of the three main parties, 298 were Conservative, 24 Liberal Democrat, and 17 Labour. In a radio interview in July, Blair made it clear that his long-term ambition was to undertake a more fundamental reform of the Lords: "There are two stages of reform: one is getting rid of the hereditary peers, and secondly there is the longer term reform for a more democratically elected second chamber. I think it is important that we do both things."

In a Lords debate on October 14, Baroness Jay, the leader of the House of Lords (a Cabinet position), responded to charges that the prime minister would have excessive powers of patronage during the interim period, when the House of Lords would consist almost exclusively of life peers. She announced the establishment of an "Appointments Commission" to oversee the appointment of future life peers and to prevent improper use of political patronage. She also announced the establishment of a royal commission to consider options for long-term reform of the House of Lords.

On December 2 William Hague, the leader of the Conservative Party, sacked Lord Cranborne, the party’s leader in the House of Lords, after it emerged that Cranborne had negotiated a secret deal with Blair under which 91 hereditary peers would keep their speaking and voting rights until the long-term future of the House of Lords had been settled. Despite Cranborne’s dismissal, Blair announced that he would stick to the deal, hoping that enough Conservative peers would tolerate the bill abolishing the rest of Britain’s hereditary peerages to ensure its smooth passage through Parliament in 1999.

One unexpected jolt to the government’s constitutional program occurred on October 27, when Ron Davies resigned as secretary of state for Wales and, two days later, as Labour’s candidate to be first secretary of the new assembly for Wales. Davies admitted to a "moment of madness" the previous night on Clapham Common, an area in south London often used by men seeking casual gay sex. Davies’s encounters resulted in the theft of his car and wallet and an attempt to blackmail him. Rather than succumb to blackmail, he gave a statement to the police and resigned from the Cabinet. In the media coverage that followed this resignation, two members of Blair’s Cabinet were publicly identified as homosexuals. (A third gay minister had openly acknowledged his sexuality more than a decade earlier.) Although considerable controversy surrounded the media’s actions, none attached to the ministers themselves, who continued as Cabinet members with Blair’s full support.

Davies was the first person to resign from Blair’s Cabinet; Blair had, however, dismissed four Cabinet ministers in July. As part of his reshuffle, he promoted one of his closest allies, Peter Mandelson, to secretary for trade and industry. A former Labour Party official, Mandelson had masterminded Labour’s successful election campaign in 1997 but was distrusted by many Labour MPs, who regarded him as devious and manipulative. He had played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in securing Blair’s election as Labour Party leader in 1994, and his widely acknowledged closeness to, and influence on, Blair caused him to be named in October 1998 as fourth in a list of people who wielded the greatest influence on men and women in Britain. On December 23, however, Mandelson was forced to resign from the government following newspaper reports that he had secretly borrowed £373,000 ($620,000) two years earlier from a fellow minister, Geoffrey Robinson, who was under investigation by Mandelson’s own department for alleged breaches of company law.

Despite his commanding majority in the House of Commons, which meant that Blair had no need to rely on any other party to pass legislation, the prime minister established a close working relationship with Paddy Ashdown, the leader of the Liberal Democrats. On November 11 they issued a joint statement in which they agreed that their two parties would widen the scope of their cooperation in a joint Cabinet committee from constitutional reform (on which the committee had worked since soon after the 1997 election) to other policy areas.

Although Blair’s government was slow to deliver on a number of its election promises (for example, hospital waiting lists continued to rise until mid-1998 before starting to fall), Labour remained substantially more popular than the opposition Conservatives. According to a Gallup poll published in November 1998, 18 months after Labour came to office, Labour was favoured by 56% of those surveyed (up 12 percentage points since the 1997 general election), the Conservatives by 25% (down 6), and the Liberal Democrats by 13% (down 4). Labour’s 31-point lead comfortably exceeded that achieved by any previous governing party in the 60-year history of opinion polls in the U.K.

Charles, prince of Wales, who celebrated his 50th birthday on November 14, also enjoyed high opinion-poll ratings. Following the death of Diana, princess of Wales, in August 1997, the prince managed to establish a fresh image as both a caring father and a future king. He continued, however, to be dogged by controversy over his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, a divorcée. Although polls detected widespread public tolerance of the relationship, they also showed that the prince would place his reputation at risk were he to marry her and seek, in due course, to have her serve as queen beside him. (SeeSpotlight: Whither Europe’s Monarchies?)

The Economy

With the economic boom of the mid-1990s coming to an end and with serious problems in many parts of the world--notably Asia and Russia--posing problems for British banks and exporters, 1998 provided a test of the ability of the new Labour government to demonstrate its claim to be able to replace "boom and bust" with greater stability. Conditions during 1998 seemed initially to support this claim. Unemployment continued to fall--to 1.3 million according to the traditional measure (the welfare claimant count) and 1.8 million according to international definitions. The economy grew by almost 3%, and inflation did not exceed the government’s 2.5% target. By the end of the year, however, global pressures had caused a sharp loss of business confidence. Gordon Brown (see BIOGRAPHIES), the chancellor of the Exchequer, acknowledged that growth would slow markedly in the months ahead.

At the centre of controversy was the Bank of England, which had been given the power in May 1997 to set interest rates independently of the government. Ignoring warnings of an impending slowdown, the bank raised its base interest rate from 7.25% to 7.5% in June. This helped the pound rise to a value equivalent to more than DM 3.10, which attracted criticism from many industrialists and trade unions, who feared that jobs and exports would be lost. Later in the year, however, the bank reversed its policy and started reducing interest rates. By the end of the year, the base rate was down to 6.25%, and sterling had fallen to DM 2.77.

In July Brown unveiled the results of a comprehensive spending review, which set out the government’s spending plans until 2002. The main winners were education and health, whose budgets would increase by 15% in real terms, and overseas aid, whose much smaller budget would increase by almost 30%. Overall, Brown said that public spending would grow by 2.75% a year, which he said would be compatible with a broad balance between taxation and spending during the years ahead. In November he adjusted his forecasts to take account of the economic slowdown but continued to predict that the government’s deficit would remain less than 1% of gross domestic product (GDP). This, he said, would allow the government comfortably to meet its "golden rule," which stated that, averaged over the economic cycle, government would borrow only for investment and not to pay for current spending. Meanwhile, Brown announced that the government would repay £1.5 billion ($2.5 billion) of its debt in 1998-99, the first repayment since 1990-91.

Foreign Affairs

The U.K. held the presidency of the European Union (EU) for the first six months of 1998. Few concrete changes emerged, but an atmosphere of businesslike cooperation was enhanced by the fact that Blair’s government was more supportive of the EU than had been the previous Conservative administration. The U.K.’s main contribution was to win acceptance in principle for the need to reform the EU’s budget, Common Agricultural Policy, and structural funds.

During the early months of 1998, U.K. ministers were embroiled in a controversy--the "Arms to Africa affair"--over the supply of weapons, in defiance of United Nations sanctions, to help Pres. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah return to power in Sierra Leone and replace the military junta that had seized power in May 1997. Before Kabbah’s return, in February 1998 it emerged that his forces had received arms from a British company, Sandline International. Sandline was run by two former Special Air Service officers, who claimed to have been acting with the support of the Foreign Office. Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, denied these claims and established an independent inquiry to examine the allegations that the sanctions had been defied. The report, published in July, concluded that Britain’s high commissioner in Sierra Leone had exceeded his authority in supporting Sandline and that Foreign Office officials should have known more and acted sooner to uphold the UN embargo; the report, however, exonerated ministers from knowledge or blame.

On July 8 the government published the results of its Strategic Defence Review. It upheld Britain’s need for a capability commensurate with its membership in NATO and its place as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It also proposed that the real level of defense spending continue to decline, as it had under the Conservatives, from 2.8% of GDP in 1996-97 to 2.4% in 2001-02. George Robertson, the defense secretary, emphasized the need for British forces to be able to contribute to Joint Rapid Reaction Forces; to this end two new aircraft carriers would be commissioned, capable of carrying twice as many aircraft as the existing ships. Robertson also announced that the U.K. would retain a "minimum nuclear deterrence," consisting of three Trident submarines, but the number of warheads on each submarine would be reduced from 96 to 48.

In December British Tornado bombers took part in Desert Fox, the four-day bombing campaign against Iraq’s military installations. Britain was the only member of the EU to join the U.S.-led action. This provoked criticism from France and undermined the intended effect of an agreement signed at the beginning of the month between Blair and French Pres. Jacques Chirac to cooperate more closely on military matters.

Toward the end of the year, strains emerged in the U.K.’s relations with Chile. On October 16 Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s former dictator, was arrested in London following a request from Spain to extradite him on charges of murder, torture, and kidnapping. Pinochet, who had come to the U.K. for medical treatment, was forced to remain in the London area while Spain’s request was considered. Pinochet’s lawyers and the Chilean government argued that Pinochet enjoyed diplomatic immunity and should therefore be allowed to fly home to Santiago. On November 25, by a 3-2 majority, a panel of U.K. Law Lords ruled that Pinochet no longer enjoyed diplomatic immunity and that the extradition proceedings should therefore go ahead. On December 11 Pinochet appeared before magistrates in south London and faced the start of the formal extradition process. On December 17, however, a new panel of Law Lords ruled that there had been procedural defects in the November 25 decision and that new hearings should be heard early in 1999 to reconsider whether Pinochet enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

Northern Ireland

The agreement established a 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly, to be elected by proportional representation and governed by a set of rules that would ensure that no major decision could be made unless it commanded the support of at least 40% of the representatives of both the nationalist and unionist communities. The assembly would be run by a 12-member executive drawn from all the main parties. Sinn Fein (and the Protestant paramilitary groups) agreed to decommission all their weapons by June 2000; the Ulster Unionists agreed to accept a voice for the Irish government in Northern Ireland’s future by means of a North-South Ministerial Council. The Irish government agreed to amend Articles 2 and 3 of Ireland’s constitution and thereby withdrew its historic claim to the territory of Northern Ireland.

On April 10 Blair announced that a peace agreement had been reached between all but one of the main political groups in Northern Ireland, ranging from Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), representing Irish nationalists, to the Ulster Unionists and Ulster Democratic Party, representing the unionist community. The one significant party that opposed the agreement was the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Ian Paisley. The agreement--which had been brokered by former U.S. senator George Mitchell; Mo Mowlam, the U.K.’s Northern Ireland secretary; and, during the final, tense 72 hours, Tony Blair--provided for a series of linked procedures for moving toward partial self-government for the province.

On May 22 the peace agreement was subjected to referenda in Northern Ireland, where 71% voted in favour of it, and the Republic, where 94% voted "yes." Exit polls in Northern Ireland indicated that the Roman Catholic community voted almost unanimously for the agreement, whereas the Protestants were evenly divided. The referenda paved the way for the first elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly on June 25, in which the Ulster Unionists won 28 seats, the SDLP 24, the DUP 20, Sinn Fein 18, and six smaller parties 18. Altogether, pro-agreement parties won 80 seats and antiagreement parties 28. Following the election David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists, was elected first minister of the new assembly (seeNOBEL PRIZES), and Seamus Mallon of the SDLP was elected deputy first minister.

The prevailing mood of optimism was punctured by a car bomb in the centre of the market town of Omagh in Northern Ireland on August 15. The death toll, about 28, was the highest of any single incident since the eruption of violence in the late 1960s. A small splinter group calling itself the "Real IRA" claimed responsibility. Under pressure from Sinn Fein, the Real IRA announced a cease-fire on August 18. Four days later another splinter group, the Irish National Liberation Army also called a cease-fire. This left only one tiny group, Continuity IRA, committed to armed struggle.

The Omagh bombing caused the U.K. government to recall Parliament from its summer recess for a special two-day session on September 2-3 to pass the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act. The act, which was similar to legislation being passed by the Irish Parliament at the same time, reduced the burden of proof needed to convict a suspect of membership in an unlawful organization. It also made it a criminal offense to conspire in the U.K. to commit terrorist acts outside the U.K. By the end of 1998, however, nobody had been charged under the new legislation.

Toward the end of the year, tensions emerged among the parties involved in the peace process as the IRA announced that it would take no early steps to decommission any of its weapons. Hague joined with the Ulster Unionists in calling for a suspension of the program of releasing prisoners convicted of terrorist offences. Mowlam, however, insisted on maintaining the prisoner-release program, arguing in a newspaper article on December 31 that the Good Friday agreement "did not make [decommissioning] a precondition for progress in other areas, and the Government is not about to start unravelling what the other parties agreed."

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.